10 even as you and we do, to pick a kernel out from between his teeth by working his lips extra hard and poking at it with his tongue. All he needed was some melted butter, and some salt and pepper. N ow, in the loveliest weather of all the year, the Sanitation De- partment suddenly remembers that win- ter is on the way and begins fighting with the Board of Aldermen about buy- ing a million dollars' worth of snow- removal equipment. We are solidly against spending a million dollars on snow-removal equipment while chrys- anthemums and asters bloom in pent- house gardens, or, for that matter, at any other time. The million dollars, if it exists, should be set aside to hire a hundred thousand men, who, whether Landon gets in or whether Browder does, whether the Giants win or whether the Yanks do, will surely be waiting eagerly for a chance at a shovel. \V e also ad vocate setting aside a fund for buying heavy wool stocking caps and fleece-lined mittens, so that every man who gets a job shovelling snow may at least have warm ears and warm hands. That IS our snow-removal program. New Buses T WENTY-FIVE new Fifth Avenue buses will start work on October 6th, on the Jackson Heights line. Be- fore the end of the year, one hundred of them will be in circulation, supplant- ing old equipment. \Ve had a private preview last week, up at the company's garage on 132nd Street, and can give a detailed report. In general appearance, the buses are like the pungent Madison A venue type, except that they are double-deckers. They are three feet longer than the old ones. The engine is in the rear. You enter (if at all) at the front, and pay the driver. A sign says "Have your dime ready." Seats are of tubular chrome nickel, and are upholstered in green plaid velour. This velour is the result of a referendum which the com- pany held among its patrons. People výere invited to vote by mail, expressing their preference, and the green velour got it-which was a lucky thing, as the company had already ordered that any- way. The downstairs section is on two levels, with an eight-inch rise just aft of the exit. We ran upstairs eagerly, to see how things were up there, and smacked our head smartly against the roof. Headroom is only five feet three inches-which isn't headroom at all, as far as we are concerned. It isn't even Adam's-apple room. The buses are streamlined, which is vital, as the aver- age speed of a Fifth Avenue bus is 8.2 miles an hour. Light fixtures have mag- nifying lenses, and the company prom- ises an interior "without shadows." The problem of the seat over the rear wheel has been met by raising the seat up and equipping it with a foot bar, so short- legged people's feet won't dangle and go to sleep. During slack hours, the buses will be operated with just a driver in charge. At other times, the company plans to have a host in attendance, to amuse the passengers with card tricks and songs, we imagine. Observing the popularity of the Sunshine cab, the company ex- perimented for a while with a sliding- roof bus, but it didn't work out, largely because there wasn't any place for the roof to slide to. The seats are arranged not monotonously, but rather whim- sically-the most unexpected one being a single perch high over the right front wheel. This little seat is a sort of nov- elty number; it is so high it has an in- divid ual metal arm rail to hold the passenger in place. He sits up there like a footman or a co-pilot. When a sam- ple bus of the new sort was tried out on the streets here last year, this seat was much prized, the sportier type of passenger evidently appreciating its rak- ish character. New uniforms for drivers and hosts also go into effect on October 6th, on all lines. The designer is none other than Mr. John A. Ritchie, president of the company. Bright Irish-green jacket trimmed with gold braid, dark gray- green trousers. The uniforms have ev- idently been made to measure, for a truckload of them arrived while we were at the garage, and we saw card- board boxes labelled "O'Shaughnessy," " s 11 . "" M G . " d h I O k u Ivan, c Inn, an tel e. Several drivers who were hanging around, off duty, immediately sur- rounded the tailor's man, twittering like a lot of show girls. .... .. . . .-- '.--.. ;iÎ 'r)' a Þ': -'À' ' - : ..""'" - ..' i Â . . t.::ë . .. f ... "" ." \ ... I' "', -- øIf OCTOBER. 3. 193" By and large, the new bus was as deeply disappointing to us as we feared it was going to be, and we are shocked beyond words to realize that open-air riding on Fifth A venue will soon be a thing of the past. Even the company seems a trifle worried, for the new buses are each to be equipped with large signs, on either flank: "SEE NEW YORK- THE \V ONDER CITY." o ld Favorite A LADY we know was sitting in the Music Hall several weeks ago, pleasantly dazed with grandeur, when, as it so often happens in the Music Hall, the orchestra swung into "Tales from the Vienna Woods." One of two matrons sitting nearby roused herself, nudged her companion, and said, "Lis- ten-that's from 'The Great Waltz.' " Natural History A T the moment of writing, the strug- gle between Man and Nature in N ew York is pretty even: the chinch bugs have taken over Bryant Park, ne- c@ssitating all sorts of excavation, but up at Rockefeller Center are three speci- mens of the fabulous "lost tree," Gor- donia A latamaha, representing a tri- umph on the part of Man (Mr. A. M. Van den Hoek, the Center arboricul- turist). Bryant Park has never before been torn up on account of chinch bugs, but it has been torn up on ac- count of almost everything else: for corn-planting, grave-digging, reservoirs, a \V orld's Fair site, a Union Army camp, and we forget what all. If the present trouble were any other insect . but chinch bugs, the soil could just be sprayed, but when you get chinch bugs, you have to cart your soil away and burn it-anyway, that's the safest thing to do. The bugs cut into the roots of plants and suck the juices out of them, so that the plant dies; they once caused damage to the extent of $79,000,000 to crops in the Middle West. They can fl y, too. They are not to be confused with bedbugs or stinkbugs, both of which are sometimes called chinch bugs by ignorant people. The story of the lost tree, as told us by Mr . Van den Hoek, starts away back in the eighteenth century, when a Phila- delphia botanist named John Bartram discovered a strange tree growing on the banks of the Alatamaha River, in Georgia. It was a little bit like a mag- nolia, but John Bartram had never seen tnything exactly like it before. He took